THOUGH JUST A DAY PAST ITS SELL-BY, IT DOES SMELL A BIT IFFY.

FRANKENSTEIN DRINKS

I’m not one of these people who necessarily buys into the supposed synonymy between ‘natural’ and ‘good’, but there is something deeply unedifying about any transparent liquid that tastes like anything other than water.

Sure, it may be possible to infuse water with (genuine, natural) fruit such that the resultant liquid is roughly transparent, but it is remarkably unlikely that the ‘fruit flavoured’ water you can buy in bottles is made this way. For one thing, it doesn’t taste like fruit at all – it tastes like what some kind of hideous scientist might construct in a lab; that is, unnatural. For another thing, a glance at the list of ingredients will not reveal to you things like mango or passion fruit, it will tell you that the drink has been compiled using items such as ‘Lycistantonium Extrazydroxide SY 345t’ and ‘Aragabazarobosmium Oxyhydroxyperoxytocin 5689’. (OK, so I haven’t checked a label lately, but I would happily bet a sizeable sum that I am right.) And why do these things sound so ghastly? Because they sound unnatural.

And while we are at it, the same goes for blue drinks. Who on God’s green earth wants to drink something blue? Such items are so obviously and shamelessly unnatural as to be, to my mind, a form of perversion.

I’ve had it with these Frankenstein drinks. Sure, shove whatever you like into your produce, but at least do us the courtesy of making a pretence that it is wholesome and natural. Blue drinks are basically saying: ‘this is shit, and you are so stupid that you’ll drink it anyway, even though you know that it is shit.’

Next time you see an advert for WKD Blue or Volvic Twist of Sodding Fruit, put your foot through the telly, and send George Osborne the bill.